Monthly Archives: March 2008

Fri 14th March 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The subsequent Big Show: Domain Round Table - The next big domain even is set for The Domain Roundtable from April 18th-21, in San Francisco California at the Shertaton Place Hotel. Among the actives and speakers planed are: (from Domainroundtable.com site) Matt Cutts who is known in the SEC community as the most visible enforcer behind the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Matt is a great source of all things Google and most importantly he is an expert on Google Search Engine Algorithms. He literally wrote some of the original Google algorithms ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Names: What’s Hot, What’s Not - A look at current trends in domain names. What are the hottest trends in domain names right now? Where are things headed south? Here’s a quick look. —–What’s HOT—– Four character domains – I’m not sure why everyone is jumping on this bandwagon. But it’s never pretty when most of the sales are between domainers. Do yourself a favor: unless the four character domain you’re buying is an acronym for several organizations or is a word, leave it ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
American Airlines Sticks to .Com for Mobile Site - Airline chooses .com over .mobi. The world’s largest airline has launched its mobile web site and opted to use .com instead of .mobi. The new mobile web site for American Airlines (NYSE: AMR) lets customers check in for flights via their mobile phones, buy upgrades, change flight times, buy upgrades and check frequent flyer balances. The company likely stuck to .com for a couple reasons: 1. People know it. I think most people would still be confused if they were ... read more ...
Thu 13th March 2008
Written by The Domains in EN
Dollar Sinks to New Lows - Since most parking companies are U.S. Based and pay publishers in dollars, and since most domain sales, are quoted in U.S. dollars, its important to keep our eye on the sinking dollar. So we are going to add this feature to our radar and keep you updated. The dollar hit a low against Japanese Yen today as the dollar dipped below 100 yen for the first time in 12 years . The dollar fell as low as 99.75 yen, according to Thomson Financial, before bouncing back above 100 yen. It was the first time ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
AOL Buy’s Social Networking Site for 850 Million - AOL Annouced today that it will pay $850 million in cash to acquire social media network Bebo, which has total global membership of more than 40 million. Bebo is one of the largest social networks in Britain, and is ranked number one in Ireland and New Zealand and number three in the U.S, according to AOL. News Corp. , which also owns the Fox television and movie studios, in addition to newspaper and Internet holdings, bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, but has estimated the network is now ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Lets Advertisers Opt Out of Domain Parking Sites - Advertisers can exclude ads from showing up on parked domains; lower revenue ahead? Google Adwords has added a new feature that allows advertisers to exclude ads from showing up on domain parking sites. This will affect parked domains on any of Google’s ad feeds, regardless of whether it is the “search” feed or “content” feed. Examples of domain parking companies using Google include DomainSponsor and Sedo. To opt out of domain parking pages, advertisers ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Stomping Out Click Fraud Critical to Industry Survival - Here is the problem: The industry is completely confused between invalid clicks and click fraud. Those are two seperate and very different things. Invalid clicks are clicks generated by robots, email harvestors, and systems that are not designed to specifically game the PPC advertising space. Click fraud on the other hand, is usually done by a group of scammers behind anonymous proxies, and ads are clicked in order to make money for themselves. Hence why it mainly affects domain parking ... read more ...
Wed 12th March 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Disney: Not shopping AOL - The CEO of Disney, Robert Iger,  speaking to a media conference in New York, said today that Disney would had no interest in acquiring AOL from Time Warner, which is expected to be on the market shortly. According to other reports Yahoo has been talking to Time Warner about entering into some relationship to fend off Microsoft’s bid. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Baidu.com: Traffic Increases - According to a report by the AP, in a note to investors, a Susquehanna Financial Group analyst, C. Ming Zhao, said the Baidu, the chinese online search engine operator’s traffic surged in late February, due to a return to normal Web usage in the wake of the Chinese New Year holiday and searches for photos related to a sex-photo scandal that involved some Hong Kong celebrities. “While the search for sex-scandal photos should be one-time in nature, and should not lead to monetization, such events ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
FUND.COM SALE AT 10 MILLION CONFIRMED - When I read the press release yesterday, stating that fund.com was sold and now being used by a public company fund.com (otcbb: FNDM) for 10 million dollars cash I was suspicious. I reviewed some press releases from the company and saw that back on January 22, 2008, fund.com announced that they: “””changed its name to Fund.com Inc to reflect its newly acquired business in a reverse merger with privately held Fund.com Inc that was filed with the SEC on January 16th. In addition to the change ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Electronic Frontier Foundation Comes out Against Snowe Bill - The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit orgainization which according to it’s site, defends the internet from laws that would harm “free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights”. On its site today, in an article written by Corynne McSherry , the group voices it opposition to the Snowe bill saying in part: “”””Sure, phishing is a problem. But you don’t solve it by rewriting trademark law and depriving lawful speakers of the chance to keep their identities private. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
EFF: Anti-Phishing Bill “A Free Speech Double Whammy” - Internet freedom group points out several flaws in bill. Electronic Freedom Foundation, a respected organization for promoting free speech and consumer protection on the internet, has spoken out against Senator Snowe’s so-called Anti-Phishing bill, calling it “A Free Speech Double Whammy.” EFF staff member Corynne McSherry points out several problems with the bill: -Does little to protect noncommercial and comparative advertising uses of trademarks -Gives a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Squashes RateMyCop.com - Web site hosted with GoDaddy taken offline, details not clear. According to Wired, GoDaddy took controversial site RateMyCop.com offline yesterday. The domain RateMyCop.com is registered with Name.com, LLC, but was hosted at GoDaddy. According to Wired’s article, visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, “Oops!!!”, which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug. RateMyCop founder ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Scam: US Copyright Registry - Another scam is making its rounds. Stay alert. I just received an email to my whois address with an official-looking notice from the so-called “US Copyright Registry”. Looks official, sounds official, but it isn’t. It’s just the latest scam to target domain name owners. The notice reads in part: Please be advised that the above noted website has not been protected and is now available for copyright registration ———————————————————- IN ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TRAFFIC Offers Free Hotel to First Time Attendees - Conference offers free hotel to prove value of event. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. promoters Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu are offering a deal to anyone who has never been to their show before: they’ll pick up your hotel. In an email sent this week, Schwartz wrote If you have never been to a TRAFFIC show because of the expense, Howard and I will pay your hotel room in Orlando to prove what a value TRAFFIC is. We are so sure you will find it to be a turning point in your careers ... read more ...
Tue 11th March 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
“Why would any domainer sell his profitable name during a vast auction” - This was a question posed to me by Jeff Schneider, a fellow domainer and a member of Rick’s Board, the other day in response to a post I wrote. At the time I told him that was a great question deserving of a post to answer. There are of course many reasons why a domainer would sell their names at a TRAFFIC auction or a Domainfest, snapnames.com auction. These live auction which are a part of domain trade shows are very good venues to liquidate domains and turn them into cash. These venue sell ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Marchex President Sells 22,000 Shares - The president and CEO of Marchex, John Keistersold, sold 22,000 shares of common stock under a prearranged trading plan for $9.05 apiece.The stock sale was conducted under a prearranged 10b5-1 trading plan which allows a company insider to set up a program in advance for such transactions and proceed with them even if he or she comes into possession of material nonpublic information. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Murdock: News Corp is Out of Yahoo Bidding - According to reports, Rupert Murdoch said he will not battle Microsoft to act as a white knight for Yahoo ‘We’re not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us,’ Murdoch was quoted in the Financial Times as saying. ‘We’re very happy to be in the Google camp,’ the Hollywood Reporter quoted Murdoch as saying. News Corp’s online social network MySpace has a web search deal with Google. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
EU OK’s Google’s Acquistion of Doubleclick - European Union regulators OK Google’s $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick, saying the deal will not hurt competition for online ads.Critics have complained the deal would give Google too much power. But the European Commission said Tuesday it found no proof that Google and DoubleClick would be able to squeeze out competitors, because Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL provided “credible” alternatives for placing ads on Web sites. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ron Jackson Resigns from Bido.com - DNJournal editor cites conflicts of interest in decision. Ron Jackson of DNJournal has always been known as “Mr. Nice Guy” and a class act in the domain industry. He recently joined up with industry veterans including Sahar Sarid to start Bido.com, a domainer platform for managing domains, selling domains, and several other future services. Previous to this venture, Jackson had never ventured into the actual business side of domains (other than owning a portfolio ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
5 Ways To Use DomainTools - If you aren’t using DomainTools, here are 5 ways to get started. DomainTools, a product of Name Intelligence, is perhaps the most powerful repository of data for domainers. Here are five ways I use the site: 1. Verify ownership of big ticket domains. When I’m buying an expensive domain I like to verify that the person I’m buying it from actually owns it. DomainTools’ historical whois tool lets you see the whois record for a domain name. This feature prevented ... read more ...
Mon 10th March 2008
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICA Newletter: Updates on Snowe Bill - This newsletter was released by the Internet Commerce Association today. Please read the Newsletter, become a member of the ICA if you are not already. Write your Senator. Do it today: “””””” Internet Commerce Association continues to take the lead in fighting the Snowe bill (S. 2661). ComputerWorld quoted Philip Corwin, ICA counsel, extensively in this article. Mr. Corwin voiced our objections to the bill while stating that ICA supports legislation reining in phishing problem and other ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cease & Desist Sent to Domain Owner Based on Redirect Service - Cease desist letter claims infringement based on ISP’s redirect service. Anyone who owns generic acronym domain names is well aware of the possibility of receiving a cease desist letter from someone claiming rights to it. This is particularly prevalent with three and four character domain names, for which any number of companies may hold a trademark or at least use the acronym. Some domain owners completely disable their acronym domains rather than park them, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain Name Wire Turns Three (And a Gift) - $100 gift available to readers. Yesterday Domain Name Wire turned 3. March 9, 2005 seems like a long time ago. Back then we were talking about Yahoo (YHOO) launching its answer to Google Adsense, GoDaddy fighting to keep whois privacy (I guess some things never change), and registry prices for .net domains dropping (OK, some things change.) The reason this site is still around while other domain news sites have started and disappeared is because of loyal readers ... read more ...